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Himmler Tried Something Similar

From top: irregular shaped swastika and anti-Semitic graffiti in Killiney, County Dublin

Ah here.

MMS writes:

Long time reading, first time interacting.

I was out for a walk on Friday night, c. 10pm, when I encountered virulent and violent anti-Semitic graffiti, in chalk and on a pathway, in Killiney Hill [Killiney, County Dublin]

After taking a few photos, I returned home and came back with a few bottles of water to clear the mess. It was dark, so I couldn’t clearly ascertain what remained, but I think it was more or less removed.

I got the sense that the graffiti had been recently applied, but that path would have gotten a lot of footfall on a fine Saturday morning, so hopefully most were spared the unpleasant surprise I had.

Anyways, I wasn’t quite sure what the best way to handle this situation was after the fact. On the one hand, in removing the graffiti I was hoping to mitigate the desired effect intended by the small-minded culprits, whatever that may have been. Attempting to publicize the photos, then, at first seemed counterintuitive at best, and counterproductive at worst.

But on the other hand, and after reading that the Anti-Defamation League recently reported an 86% increase in anti-semitic incidents this year, I wondered if highlighting – and, hopefully, calling out – the emboldened, if not normalized, racist and bigoted elements in our society was an important act of civic duty.

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I have come to appreciate the editorial responsibility ye have cultivated here on BS.

PS Pretty sure the numnuts responsible got the orientation of the swastika wrong! Unless we have anti-semite Hindus or Jains on our hands. Numnuts seems more likely.

You could’ve simply said your thing with one sentence and less photographs.
…but oh no…
…you stayed on until Secondary School…
…you read a book that you never needed to…
…sorry, not a book…the letters page of the Oirish Times, too many times…

I’m not actually a racialist, but those Germans… They used to be as bad as the French.
(I like Nigereans. I’d say it more often if I could spell it properly.)

But the Germans…
Why are all their checkout operators Polish???
– Yeah… You probably didn’t even…
– Think about it.

I can do politics too.
I charge a lot but the jokes are always there to be taken.

What was this post about again?
-Did somebody steal chalk from the blackboard? Did somebody wet themselves?

I don’t mean to trivialise anything, but that style of excruciating writing grinds me Germaine Greers.
I bid you adieu. Time is money and I haven’t got enough time.*

reminds me of that “hate crime” against the George pub that conveniently used chalk too so it would was off easily and in a completely unintentional result garnered loads of press coverage for the bar itself

I doubt the George need the publicity, they’re a long-running establishment, one of very few gay bars in Dublin. It’s reasonable to address such messaging as a hate crime despite the materials used in its application. SMH.

…not way behind at all…just drive up North and you’ll find the Star of David flying in loads of places…usually alongside other flags displaying nazi symbols…you’ll also find the Irish national flag and even a few Palestinian flags but they’ll probably be on top of bonfires for burning later tonight…

I am LITERALLY shaking right now, this gang of ultra violent alt-reich nazi skinheads will LITERALLY kill if they’re not stopped immediately, as others above pointed out above the highly dangerous nazi that attacked the George is still on the loose, something needs to be done immediately otherwise national socialism could easily take hold here and another holocaust could begin.

The local Guards should be informed. They are best positioned to figure out whether this is isolated and the act of the offspring of the shallow end of the gene pool, or part of a larger trend in racist troublemaking. In my experience, they welcome being informed of any type of hate crime.

Is it anti semitism or is it clearly directed at jewish people therefore it’s really anti-jewish, anti Israeli or maybe specifically anti-zionism? If you think about it all three are different in distinct ways.

Semetic is an archaic racial term used to desccribe a number of different groups of people including jews, palestinian arabs, north african arabs and also bedouins. The word semetism came about through a German anthropologist in the late 19th century referring to these races as a group with similar monotheistic traditions.

The use of “Anti-semetism” as a term relating specifically to Jewish people came about because of the league of anti-semitism founded by a German as response to the fear of what was percieved as the liberal and dangerous rise of Judaism in Germany.

Since then the term has been co-opted by Jews as a kind of weird political propaganda tool, presumably by zionism, and I say this because the use of it to describe anti-jewish sentiment or reference only Jewish people has been disputed for almost a hundred years.

Firstly I don’t know if you are anti Semitic or not.
I hope not but this is the internet and the age of alternative facts.
Secondly Scrawling a (crappy) swastika and scrawling “kill Jews” is anti Semitic, no “if”, no “but” no” maybes”.
So thanks for the Etymology, but no thanks.

To be fair there is a delay in my comments getting posted.. I’m on the naughty list…and one didn’t go through to you earlier for some reason.

There were two posts one after the other before I replied to you above.

Anuyway I can see your a little sensitive about this issue so let me assure you that you are confused if you think I’m supporting anything to do with “Kill Jews” alonmg with swastikas being written anywhere along side it but I have no problem talking about it and giving my opinion based on facts.

The use of the term anti-semitism both by the german who founded the league of anti-semitism and the Jewish people who subsequently co-opted it as a term for anti-Jewish sentiment are in fact both using the term incorrectly.

In other words, kill jews as a statement is not anti-semetic in itself because arabs, bedoins are not considered Jews..

Most likeley some angry teenager watched a documentary on zionism or the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and decided to express it with the term “Kill Jews” instead of ” I am angry at the small percentage of Jews in Israel who are Zionists and support this tragic situation”

It could be just random racism too.. I’m only speculating.. but fair play for cleaning it up before it upsets any palestinians who might have to be reminded of the plight of their cousins abroad.

:-J whatever are you spouting, I think “Kill Jews” and a swastika, says it all without even having to put a name on it. And also, what have Palestinians got to do with what happened to the Jews during WWII?

No, I don’t think it says it all and I’m not condoning or supporting any idea of writing “Kill Jews” anywhere. The fact I had to make this clear is just daft on your part and anyone else if that’s how you read my comments.

Everything, I’ve written is based on historical fact.. look it up if you ike, ask questions etc np.

Sure, with tongue in cheek, I got a bit sarcastic and I had a jab at the original post and author who seems very concerned with the rise in “anti-semitism” in Dublin and Ireland.
So much so, that we’re being quoted statistical research data from the Anti-defamation league. Someone should report the author for defaming the concept of common sense,

Anyway the point is very simple, “anti-semitism” is an archaic technical term for a racial group that has been adopted, co-opted and recycled and literally makes no sense whether it;s a jew vs german or a zionist vs nazi or vice versa or anyone else who uses it after the end of the19th century.

It just makes no sense to use that term and all this nonsense stops people from understanding things properly or maybe actually fixing the underlying problems.

It’s anti-jewish sentiment, racism, facism or teenage stupidity but it’s not “Anti-semitiism”. It’s not my fault if you and other people believe in meaningless language that is intentionally used to confuse everyone..

BTW :
Palestinians + Jews + WW2 = Balfour Declaration endorsed by Churchill / Rosevelt etc….
You really should know about this already if your going to be talking about the Jewish people, Israel and the fundamentalist-religious zionists and the illegal occupation of Palestine….

Your argument is based your version of history. Germans had been using “Semites” as a pejorative for Jewish for decades. Long before the leagues you mention. Heinrich von Treitschke, for one, but it was before him too. It doesn’t matter what races Semite apply to in its original form, it was turned into referring only to Jews by Germany (even when it was Prussia) and as part of propaganda against Jews (which wasn’t just an issue in Germany).

It’s a useless argument and whether you like it or not an offensive argument. It gets more offensive when you state “Since then the term has been co-opted by Jews as a kind of weird political propaganda tool, presumably by zionism”.

That’s when your plea that it was a good spirited “trap” based on sound (flawed) historical etymology of the term starts to have the whiff of bovine effluvia about it.

It wasn’t co-opted by Zionists as part of propaganda, it was co opted by groups who opposed in general the rise in anti-Jewish sentimentality across Prussia and Europe. It was propaganda dressed up in pseudo-science and as such tried to use pseudo-scientific terms in order to sound plausible. Hence Semite, rather than just Jewish. It was basing attempt at inherent inferiority on race rather than religion to appear plausible. But as the majority of “Semite” immigrants and citizens were Jewish, it was clear what the intention was.

But you found a narrative that fits your ideas and prejudice. Good for you.

Semite became synonymous with Jew through the groups of people and sentiment across Europe that were attacking Jews from at least the mid 19th century. That’s why it is applied to forms of propaganda against Jewish people. Not just “holocaust” events and violence. Antisemitism was a term describing hate speech against Jews for a century before the “Final Solution”.

But its good to try to demean these events by focusing on a term someone uses rather than the actual event.

My comments are not from my own version of history and your reply shows that either I have not articulated my points very well, which is at least partly true and you are offended by me even suggesting that there is a problem with the misuse of the term “anti-semitism” therefore you accuse me very unfairly of trying to demean the situation.

Here is my original argument pointd squarely at the authors article who refers to the incident as anti-semitism and offers statistics about it’s rise :

“Is it anti semitism or is it clearly directed at jewish people therefore it’s really anti-jewish, anti Israeli or maybe specifically anti-zionism? If you think about it all three are different in distinct ways. ”

We don’t know who, why and what was their motivation for the situation. It could have been an adult racist and facist hard right nationalist supporter or a teenager who has just watched a video online about the illegal occupation of palestine by israel who are motivated by religious fundamentalism.

It’s possible for example, whoever it was might even have just read a book or watched documentary footage of Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein discussing the Israeli-Palestine conflict and how Israel motivated by Zionism, American imperialism amongst other things, is the problem and is one hundred percent to blame for the credible solutions being ignored and the failure of any hope of resolution being achieved so far. We just don’t know?…

Norman Finkelstein’s deals with my argument in his book, “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History”. -Incedentally a great book and follow up to “The Holocaust Industry: The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering”.

Finkelstein is considered to be the intellectual authority on this issue not by me or some anti-semetic preducial ideologues you might think I belong to but by Noam Chomsky himself. Chomsky is very widely considered to be the leading intellectual mind on the planet who is alive right now.(I’m sure you know this already)

It’s important to note that Chomsky and Finkelstein are both Jews in case anyone reading this is not aware.

I merely suggested that readers of my comments might look at this situation in a different way that maybe the bigger problem might be the term “anti-semetism” that is preventing people from seeing the possible reasions why it was done.

“Since then the term has been co-opted by Jews as a kind of weird political propaganda tool, presumably by zionism”.
– In this statement I can see how this might have seemed flippant and the mere mention of the word Zionism will get you branded as a tin-hat conspiracy theorist but it’s not part of a useless argument at all and the “trap” I was referring to is exactly that point.

Any mention of anything to do with “anti-semetism” is a trap as it creates an immediate climate of superficial anger, rage and polarizes the argument into people who love others on one side and preducial, racist, bigoted and facist extremists on the other.

I agreed with most of your reply and a lot of it actually repeats and furthers my own argument offering even more information about the history and entymology of the terminology than I wanted to get into but either way, thanks for that. I’m not sure why you don’t agree or maybe you’ve misread my comments a little but I stand on what I said as being factually correct.

Anyway, It was an attempt to simplify the issue and maybe get people thinking about it in a different way that might lead to more enlightened discussions and maybe even some kind of solutions.